Small-to-Medium Business

October 31, 2007

AUSTIN, TX--Business owners, if you need to wait till acceptance rates hit a certain plateau
before adopting your own social media strategy, then I promise you
you're efforts will be doomed. Fact is, social media is growing so fast
and morphing so rapidly, that if you're company takes a "wait till next
year" approach, you'll be left behind and never be able to catch up.

Take for example a new survey by Jupiter released this last July that warns retailers away from social media campaigns. eCommerce Times quotes Jupiter's report

"The majority of online shoppers who have used social
and community sites while
researching and purchasing do not believe
that such sites affected their purchase decisions, and few online
shoppers said they spend incrementally more due to their use of social
and community sites."

Also quoted is Jupiter's the lead analyst for the report, Patty Freeman Evans, as saying

"Retailer[s] should take a pause from all the hype
they've heard about social networking and social media because those
sites are not something that's going to immediately drive incremental
sales for them."

If you take Jupiter as Gospel and forgo a social media campaign,
what will happen to your business if just say consumers begin to flock
to social media and your largest competitor has a year's jump on you
with their wikis, forums, blogs and user-generated content (UGC)?

IT professionals cite social media as the most trustworthy online source of information when making purchasing decisions

Executive-level decision-makers spend nearly 3.5 hours per week
consuming or participating in social media - the highest usage profile
of any IT audience

Nearly two-thirds of IT professionals surveyed say social media
content and user-generated tools have made for a more informed
purchasing decision; nearly three-quarters say such content and tools
have made their lives more efficient.

IT audiences now spend as much or more time consuming or
participating in social media as they do consuming editorial media or
vendor content.

What do the purchasing habits of IT geeks mean to you if say you're a maker of premium dog food?
(Attention Jim Kelly!) Consider that these geeks owned PCs while you
were still banging out forms in triplicate on an electric typewriter.
They were online as you bought your first Commodore 64. And now that
you're ordering just about everything on Amazon while listening to your
iPod, take a moment to consider who was there first. The geeks shall
inherit the earth not simply through usurping the popular kids. The
ultimate Revenge of the Nerds is that you and your customers grow a little more geekier every day.

Are you going to sit on your hands while your competitors adopt the Tao of the Geek and steal away your market share?

Here's some more findings about UGC that Jordan McCollum culled from a new survey from PR Week and Manning, Selvage & Lee:

43.4% of marketers will use UGC in the next year

42.3% have definitely allocated some portion of their budget to UGC

92.5% would consider turning to an Internet/new media specialist
for a “new media campaign,” and 47.7% would turn to them first (that’s
more than 2.5 times greater than the next choice, a PR agency).

46.6% think Internet/new media agencies do a very good or
excellent job measuring their effectiveness (second only to direct
marketing agencies).

Did you catch this figure -- 43.4% of marketers will use UGC in the next year? What percentage of these marketers are retailers, the survey didn't say. My advice is not to wait till next year to find out.

I'd also advise you to stop listening to surveys and start ramping up your social media campaign now.

October 24, 2007

AUSTIN, TX--When Austinites are searching Google for the products you sell, where does your business show up?

Whether you're a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker, every
business owner knows that the survival of your company depends on your
ability to compete with other butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.
But then things got a lot more complicated with the Internet -- now 58%
of shoppers, according to Accenture, are going online first to do their
research before stepping foot in a store.

Over the last several years, Phenix Public Relations has cracked the
Google algorithm with its corporate clients and subsequently pushed
their blogs up in the Google rankings to the number two position next
to large enterprises like IBM. Lately, we've been tweaking our
campaigns so they could be affordable to small business owners. And now
we've launched our new Digitial PR Service for Small to Medium-Sized
Businesses. (For more information about this program, click here.)

Our Digital PR Service enables clients to open an online channel of
communication with their targeted universe of customers, influencers
and prospects. With our help, you can compete not just locally but also
against international companies that have spent millions of dollars to
reach that coveted number one position on Google.

Anchored by a business blog, our campaigns use a variety of Web 2.0 and
social media tools to create an extraordinarily effective marketing
tool. Also, out team will take responsibility for as much, or as little
of the online content development and infrastructure as the client
requires. Why does your business need a blog?

Considering that 62% of searchers click on a 1st page link and only 10%
goes beyond the 3rd page, let's go back to my original question: When
a consumer types "best (fill in the blank) Austin" into Google do you show up on the front page?

If you'd like to get more out of your marketing efforts and do it with
a much smaller spend than traditional advertising or PR, let's set up a
meeting.

October 22, 2007

AUSTIN, TX--This news via the Marketing and Strategy Innovation blog: 80 percent of B2B
technology customers believe they found their vendors, rather than the
vendors finding them. So what does this mean? Should vendors be upset
that their branding and outreach efforts have fallen on deaf ears, and
that all their earnest attempts to “engage” customers have failed?

Absolutely not.

From spam filters to do-not-call lists, the buying public has made
it very clear that they don’t want to be marketed to. If they want a
particular product or service, well, they’d prefer to go out and find
it themselves. Fortunately for vendors, the customers who come to you
are much more predisposed to buy than the customers you have to
approach.

The best strategy for vendors is twofold. First, make it as easy as
possible for people to find you. And then second, once they’ve found
you, make it as easy as possible for them to buy.

We’ve talked here before about how blogs can help improve your
search engine rankings and web presence, thus leading more customers to
you. Additionally, you can populate your blog with all the information
about your product and company that just wouldn’t fit into a formal
brochure or web site. Deep technical information. Commentary from
product designers. Opinions from your executive staff that just might
persuade somebody about to make a purchasing decision that yours is the
sort of company they’d like to do business with.

In other words, a blog is a great place to sell without making a hard sell.

Once you’ve gotten customers to your site, whether by blog, ad,
white paper, hook or crook, you then have to make it easy for them to
say “yes.” That means not embedding product information within branch
upon branch of confusing product trees. (This article by Internet Word Magic’s
Michelle Howe covers some of the basics of improving site navigation.)
Additionally, I’d advise leaving Flash animation out of it—there’s
nothing more annoying than being unable to bookmark or send a colleague
a URL to relevant product information.

Depending on what you’re selling, you may or may not want an
e-commerce element to your site. If you forego the e-commerce, you need
some other means to advance the sale. And that means getting
information about your prospects so that you can follow up with them.
Remember: if they came to you, they’re going to be a lot more willing
to part with their contact info.

October 21, 2007

Because almost every affluent shopper goes to the Internet first before buying
offline --
75
percent says a recent study -- so every business, no matter what size, needs
to have a presence on the Web.
(Click
here for more related reading on consumer buying habits.)

Whether looking for a nose job, a car or a lawyer, consumers first do their
homework online. And when a consumer types "Best _________ Austin, TX" into
Google does your company show up on the front page? If a customer sees all your
competitors on the front page of Google, then you're losing money because of
what
Phenix
Public Relations calls the "Google Rule of 3's."

The Google Rule of 3's

Almost every searcher clicks on one of the first 3 links on Google
because they've been conditioned to consider the first 3 links as the most
accurate

Most people who use Google never go beyond the first 3 pages

If your company makes it to the top 3 links, you can expect 300 times
more traffic and at least a 3rd more
business

If your web site is not on the front page of Google, you already know the answer
to that question.

Here's why:

Both websites and blogs are rewarded by Google with placement on the valuable
front page of a search when either property has the highest degree of relevance
or
popularity.

But smaller, less popular blogs often get higher placement than larger websites
because the Google algorithm gives disproportionate weight to sites that update
the most and have the highest level of human interaction. Over the last several
years, Phenix Public Relations cracked this code with its corporate clients and
subsequently pushed its corporate blogs up in the Google rankings to the number two
position next to large enterprises like IBM and Hewlett Packard. With our help,
your blog can compete against international companies that have spent millions
of dollars to reach that coveted number one position on Google.

So when Austinites are searching for the products you sell, where does your
business show up on Google?

If you'd like to grow your business, sell more product and get more out of your
online marketing efforts,
please
send me an email for a demo and consultation.

MORE:

To learn more about our Digital PR Service for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses, click here.

Phenix Public Relations' Digital PR Service enables clients to
open an online channel of communication with their targeted universe of
customers, influencers and prospects. Anchored by a corporate Blog, Phenix Public Relations uses a variety of Web 2.0 tools to create an extraordinarily effective
corporate PR, awareness and marketing tool. Unlike traditional PR, Small
Business Digital PR also incorporates a proven means of
search
engine optimization, lead generation and opportunity capture.

AUSTIN, TX--In Austin, small to medium-sized business face a
particularly daunting challenge. Whether you're a butcher, a baker or a
candlestick maker you know that the growth, not to mention the survival
of your company depends on your ability to compete with other butchers,
bakers and candlestick makers. But then along came the Internet and
things got a lot more complicated now that shoppers are going online
first to do their research before stepping foot in a store.

If your business doesn't show up on the front page of Google, this quote from SearchEngineWatch should make your worry:

"A new report from Accenture reveals that the majority of product
research happens online, while the majority of purchases resulting from
that research happen offline in local physical store locations. [...]
the report notes that 67 percent of survey respondents prefer to make
purchases in physical stores while 69 percent research product features
online and 68 percent compare prices online. Combining these variables,
58 percent said they locate items online before going to a store to
purchase, while only 13 percent said the Internet plays no part in
their offline shopping.

I'd be willing to bet that with Austin being one of the most wired
cities in the U.S., a much larger
percentage Austinities rely on the
Internet more than any other city of comparable size. Even more
daunting is the fact that Austin consumers are using all kinds of
technology to make them immune to your advertising efforts. When you
place an ad on TV, your targeted buyers are TIVO-ing right through your
expensive ad buy. Does radio advertising work? Not since all the
Tarrytown and Westlake moms got iPods that plug into their car
dashboards. Print advertising? Forget about it, no one reads the
newspaper anymore.

So that leaves online advertising, right? Unfortunately, wily,
tech-savvy consumers now customize Google to avoid all advertising.
They also read only what they want when they subscribe to RSS feeds [defined]. And to avoid the bane of the Internet -- pop-up ads -- everyone uses pop-up blockers.

To quote the Wall Street Journal's Kevin J. Delaney, "The importance of
appearing at the top of the results is undisputed." Delaney's article (found here)
points to JupiterResearch/iProspect study that "concluded last year
that 62% of search-engine users generally clicked on a link to a site
on the first page of results."

So what's the butcher to do when all his customers go online to compare
his prices to Sam's Club? How is the baker to survive when she has to
compete not just against her cross-town rivals, but also the entire
Internet? Will a "Keep Austin Weird" candlestick maker be undone by the
25% lower price on Amazon? (Not to mention the free shipping that keeps
people from having to suffer through Austin traffic.)

My advice, start a blog and run with the big dogs. When I help my
corporate clients with their blogs, they've been able to compete and
sometimes dominate their much larger and more well-funded competitors
online.

Here's Mr. Delaney again:

"Companies always have the option of paying for the search
advertisements that usually appear above and alongside the
search-engine results, but non-advertising results can be more
significant. JupiterResearch estimates that when consumers are looking
for products and services, they click on non-advertising results almost
80% of the time."

With a blog, the butcher, baker and candlestick maker can work their
way up to the front page of Google and get those clicks on their
products and the bodies into their stores.

How? Come back soon and I'll let you in on a little theory I've been
working on over the last several years called "The Google Rule of 3's."

To learn more about our Digital PR Service for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses, click here.

October 18, 2007

Obviously, that title’s a lame play on the old adage that you can’t
spell “XYZ” without “X,” but in a world driven more and more by digital
information, my new saying has some credence. Way back in the
day, marketing meant word-of-mouth. Then it came to mean big media
pushing out a message to a big audience. But, increasingly, successful B2C
marketing is beginning to mean word-of-mouth again. Today’s consumers
love to participate in online communities, and they are learning to
look to those communities for reliable messages (news, product reviews,
tips, etc).

Some marketers are resistant to the notion of an online marketing
community, but they should recognize that there’s a difference between
purely user-populated (or “wiki”) environments and – say – blogs. Blogs
are written by someone, and while they invite user participation, they
don’t necessarily depend on it for content. However, if your blog isn’t
inviting users to participate, you’re missing out on a lot of message
delivery. Putting it another way, Lorelle VanFossen of The Blog Herald points out that your best
friends are usually those that both talk and listen. She explains that
blogging should “feature a skill known as active listening, the process
of listening and responding to another person to improve mutual
understanding.” That increased understanding makes listeners (readers
in this case) much more receptive to messaging, as long as the message
itself is worthwhile.

It’s also important to recognize that people like to belong to branded communities. For that reason, writes David Armano in his BusinessWeek article
“It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid,” brand identity (and affinity)
is often at the heart of communities. He points to brands like
Harley-Davidson that have fiercely loyal groups who bond together
around the brand and champion its messaging. He sums up his superb
article by arguing that

“marketers, businesses, and designers must have an
intimate understanding of how these platforms are evolving and
influencing human behavior. There has to be an in-depth understanding
of why some us of love to incorporate these services in our digital
lives.”

The “platforms” he’s talking about include blogs, and that’s why
marketing can no longer just be about pushing a message at people and
hoping they like it. Current marketing also has to involve the audience
in the propagation of message with merit. It has to make them want to
spread that message through their community, especially if that
community is virtual.

October 17, 2007

"A new report from Accenture reveals that the majority of product research happens online, while the majority of purchases resulting from that research happen offline in local physical store locations. [...] the report notes that 67 percent of survey respondents prefer to make purchases in physical stores while 69 percent research product features online and 68 percent compare prices online. Combining these variables, 58 percent said they locate items online before going to a store to purchase, while only 13 percent said the Internet plays no part in their offline shopping."

"Seventy five percent who researched their purchases before visiting a
retail location used the Internet as their primary source of
information. The leading online resources were retail Web sites (73
percent), manufacturer websites (68 percent) and search engines (49
percent)."

"The study 'Understanding How Consumers Use the Internet to Research
and Shop for CE (consumer electronics) Products' consisted of a
25-minute survey of a sample consumer group who bought or were planning
on purchasing electronics, including mobile phones, computers, digital
media players, televisions, and digital cameras. In the study, CEA and
Yahoo! tracked $32.5 billion worth of purchases and found that $25.1
billion, 77 percent, of those purchases were made after Internet
research."

"Over the past two years, that delay time has risen by 80%. So, more
consumer comfort in shopping online equals *longer* conversion cycles.
That's something I don't think any of us ever predicted would happen."

"The chart
under Question #3 shows that across all the social networking sites
reviewed for this study, 34% of the Internet user population has had a
purchase influenced (one way or another) by one of these sites. All the
editorial content that’s been generated within the last year about how
the consumer is now in charge and that the marketer is merely along for
the ride becomes more understandable given that one in three Internet
users has had a purchase decision influenced by content generated by
another Internet user."

"According to a recent survey of 3,000 IT buyers and marketers, some
83% of buyers actively use Google to find tech information. About 65%
of marketers participate in paid search programs to find these buyers.
Maybe the other marketers are missing out."

October 16, 2007

"Key among the findings relating to the current search engine user
community is that 62% of search engine users click on a search result
within the first page of results, and a full 90% of search engine users
click on a result within the first three pages of search results. [...]
Fewer search engine users are willing to click on results past the
third page now (10%)."

"The importance of appearing at the top of the results is undisputed. A
JupiterResearch study sponsored by search marketing firm iProspect
concluded last year that 62% of search-engine users generally clicked
on a link to a site on the first page of results. That has fueled the
emergence of an industry of search-engine "optimization" specialists
who help businesses try to find ways for their sites to rise in the
rankings, such as using more-explanitory page titles. Companies always
have the option of paying for the search advertisements that usually
appear above and alongside the search-engine results, but
non-advertising results can be more significant. JupiterResearch
estimates that when consumers are looking for products and services,
they click on non-advertising results almost 80% of the time."

"The software behind Google's search technology conducts a series of
simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second.
Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on
a web page. Google uses numerous factors including its patented
PageRank™ algorithm to examine the entire link structure of the web and
determine which pages are most important. It then conducts
hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to
the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance
and query-specific relevance, Google is able to put the most relevant
and reliable results first."

"How do you get what you want on page one for your brand phrases? When facing negative content at the top of the SERPs [definition],
it’s a challenge many companies want to conquer very quickly. The good
news is that it is doable; it’s just that not many people talk about
how to do it."

"'Google is not God,' he says. 'It's a machine, a superb machine that
benefits millions, but it's still just a machine. And what it turns up
can have remarkably deleterious impact on hardworking people and
businesses.'"

"Beginning in September 2006, Skyfacet no longer showed up on the first few pages of Google's results when users typed in search terms like 'diamonds' and 'engagement ring.' The site's traffic vanished, and Sanar says his sales dropped $500,000 in three months."